Welcome to the January 2021 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.

Letter from our Executive Director

In the weeks and months to come, Global Washington members will be instrumental to the needed recovery and rebuilding for a better future. Looking ahead, we are excited to announce our draft 2021 editorial calendar, which lays out the topics we plan to cover this year. These topics were touched on at the Goalmakers events and the National Forum in 2020, and we plan to go deeper still in exploring solutions with our members this year.

Our first campaign in February will focus on Climate Justice, which “links human rights and development to achieve a human-centered approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable people and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its impacts equitably and fairly” as defined by former President of Ireland Mary Robinson. We look forward to spotlighting the work of Global Washington members in low- and middle-income countries for Climate Justice.

Check out our 2021 editorial calendar and stay tuned for featured articles and associated events.

Also, below you’ll find a look back at the issue campaigns we championed with our members in 2020. While the COVID-19 pandemic shaped a great deal of the discussion, the Sustainable Development Goals formed the backbone of our collective response. These 17 interconnected and indivisible global goals continue to be a critical framework for setting the world back on a better course over the next decade.

You can also explore all of our past events, issue briefs, and videos on our website.

Kristen Dailey
Executive Director

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Recap of 2020 Issue Campaigns

January 2020: Disaster Response & Long-Term Recovery

World Concern staff assess damage and assist survivors in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo credit: World Concern.

January 12, 2020 was the ten-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. For January’s campaign, we created a retrospective on what makes a disaster response successful, and how to lay the foundation for both immediate and long-term recovery. The associated event, Future-Proofing Global Emergency Response Systems, included speakers from the Global Emergency Response Coalition, a lifesaving humanitarian alliance made up of eight leading U.S.-based international aid organizations, five of which are GlobalWA members.

February 2020: Climate Justice

Women in Fiji creating traditional crafts. Photo credit: Rise Beyond the Reef

This topic examined the ways in which those who are already struggling with poverty, oppression and instability are affected by climate change, and how to ensure that climate justice remains at the center of the response. As part of this campaign, GlobalWA and Seattle Foundation hosted the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, who presented on her foundation’s work for global climate justice.

March 2020: Gender Equality

Vital Voices staff and Global Freedom Exchange Fellows from countries across Africa gathered in Cape Town at a women-owned, women-run social enterprise, called Khayelitsha Cookie Company. Photo courtesy of Vital Voices Global Partnership.

In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8, 2020), we leveraged this campaign to highlight effective strategies to stop gender-based violence around the world. We also hosted a public event on the topic with speakers from Seattle International Foundation, OutRight Action International, and CARE.

April 2020: Clean Water

Photo by Water1st International at Hassan Al Banna Academy in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The April campaign dove into World Water Day (March 22, 2020) and examined how a data-informed approach can improve sustainable clean water access globally.

May 2020: Impacts of COVID-19

Augusto Cardona, an Agros partner in Nuevo Amanecer, Honduras, stands in front of his empty field in 2015. He later planted it with corn. Credit: Cesar Velasquez, Agros International

In May we took a look at the impact the pandemic was already having on two specific areas: global food systems, and refugees and other displaced people. Associated events on these topics included Food Security and COVID-19 in the Global South, as well as Refugees, Internally Displaced People, and COVID-19.

June 2020: Global Health & COVID-19

In June, our campaign explored the impact of COVID-19 on patients with cancer and other non-communicable diseases. GlobalWA members employed a number of strategies to address the spread of the pandemic and at the same time keep other health priorities on track. Together with the Washington Global Health Alliance we hosted a roundtable on how cancer care and research has adapted to the new realities of the pandemic.

July 2020: Access to Finance and Equitable Growth

Women from a community in Quezon City, Philippines follow social distancing rules as they wait to enter a market. Flyers from IDEALS and Oxfam share essential tips on how to cope with COVID-19 and quarantine. Credit: Ideals.

The July campaign explored the economic impacts of COVID-19, including its effect on people’s livelihoods, the informal business sector, and access to financing.

August 2020: Education

Even with schools closed around the world, learning continues. Girl Rising partner Metis Collective developed a Home Learning Guide for students in Kenya. Photo by Metis Collective.

Our August campaign, coinciding with International Youth Day (August 12, 2020) examined successful strategies for distance learning and ensuring that students’ most urgent needs could still be met during global lockdowns related to the pandemic. The associated event, Education and COVID-19 in the Global South, included speakers from Girl Rising, Rwanda Girls Initiative, and Sahar Education for Afghan Girls.

September 2020: Children’s Rights

Ana, a former resident of La Alianza in Guatemala, successfully reintegrated with her family and is now practicing traditional weaving to earn income. Photo: Covenant House.

The September campaign took a close look at the innate rights of children around the world and how securing and defending those rights, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensures that they are able to survive and thrive. A related event focused on the rise of child labor globally amid the pandemic and included speakers from ChildFund International, Human Rights Watch, and Amplio.

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The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the world’s extraordinary fragility and highlighted trenchant societal inequalities. Managing the pandemic has been hard enough and doing so while addressing other urgent stresses – like climate change, discrimination and violence – has added to the difficulty. The challenge is further heightened in the face of what may soon become recurrent interlocking patterns of environmental, economic, and social disruption.
What should be done to move forward? How can the world find a way out of this difficult situation?

These were the questions tackled by participants in 17 Rooms 2020, a yearly convening of leading experts and practitioners brought together by the Brookings Institution and The Rockefeller Foundation to channel ideas and energy into actions for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A clear consensus from this year’s convening was that the SDGs are more relevant than ever, and should be used as a “North Star” to guide action out of the Covid-19 crisis.

Read more and download the report by the 17 Rooms Secretariat.

Adara Development is delighted to announce the appointment of Madeline Vaughan as its new CEO, effective 1 January 2020.

Madeline joined Adara eight years ago and has been an integral member of the organisation’s Global Leadership Team. Most recently, Madeline was Senior Programmes Director working across Adara’s maternal, newborn and child health and remote community development programmes.

Continue Reading

By Corrina Grace, Partners Asia Social Innovator

Therese Caouette, center, poses with teachers from a village school in Chin State, while on a bike trip with Partners Asia in western Myanmar. A longtime Seattle resident, Caouette plays a critical role in shaping Partners Asia and advocating for trust-based philanthropy. Photo credit: Tim Schottman/Partners Asia.

It could be argued that SDG17 (Partnerships for the Goals) is the most important of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The complex and interdependent nature of the challenges we face in the world will not be solved by any one individual, organization, or government alone. There is not a single solution that can be scaled or a transformative public policy to be implemented that can get us to where we need to be. As the voices of the People’s Climate Movement have been crying out for years: “To change everything, it takes everyone.” Achieving the Global Goals and meeting the ambitious 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda will require strong partnerships and collective actions that bridge across traditional boundaries such as race, religion, class, gender, and geography. It also required recognition that not all partnerships have been created equally. Continue Reading

By Irit Tamir, Director of Oxfam America’s Private Sector Department

An apparel worker in Dhaka wears a face covering and maintains social distance from other workers as garment factories reopened amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: UN Women/Fahad Abdullah Kaizer via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

COVID-19 has laid bare the deep inequalities our economic model has fostered and thus is a major threat in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 10 (reducing inequalities). Business has a role to play in achieving SDG 10—but a recent Oxfam report highlights how big corporations are exacerbating rather than reducing inequality.

While the global pandemic saw devastating jobs losses of 400 million, nearly have a billion people are expected to be further pushed into poverty. But not everyone is losing out – billionaires have seen their incomes rise as shares in big corporations saw their profits jump. Power, Profits and the Pandemic: From corporate extraction for the few to an economy that works for all found five ways in which corporations are exacerbating inequality.

Continue reading this article on our Goalmakers Blog.

By Irit Tamir, Director of Oxfam America’s Private Sector Department

An apparel worker in Dhaka wears a face covering and maintains social distance from other workers as garment factories reopened amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: UN Women/Fahad Abdullah Kaizer via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

COVID-19 has laid bare the deep inequalities our economic model has fostered and thus is a major threat in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 10 (reducing inequalities). Business has a role to play in achieving SDG 10—but a recent Oxfam report highlights how big corporations are exacerbating rather than reducing inequality. Continue Reading

By Kristen Dailey, Executive Director of Global Washington

In their annual Goalkeepers Report, Bill and Melinda Gates noted that after decades of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, progress has stalled, and we are in fact going backwards on nearly all of the indicators.

We are now in a situation where we need to restart and rebuild systems and solutions to get the SDGs back on track. However, we should not rebuild in a way that takes us back to the status quo. We have an opportunity to transition into something better. Something that is more innovative, cross-sectoral, and most importantly, more equitable. Continue Reading

By Mark Ritchie, President of Global Minnesota

Every year, on October 16^th, people around the world take time to observe World Food Day, commemorating the creation by the United Nations of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This year Global Minnesota organized a day-long virtual symposium under the theme “Countdown to Zero Hunger in 2030.” We focused on forging the new partnerships needed to accelerate our progress on Sustainable Development Goal #2 – Zero Hunger.

This happens to be the 75^th anniversary year of the UN and the FAO, both launched right after World War II, in 1945. On the 50^th anniversary of both of these vital global institutions a coalition of groups, coordinated by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,  gathered the surviving founders of the UN and the FAO to both honor them and to learn as much as we could about their motivations, their hopes and dreams, and how they saw the outcomes after 50 years. We gathered in the original settings – the Opera House in San Francisco and the Chateau in Quebec City, to recreate as best we could the original atmosphere and context. Without exception, the speakers opened and closed their remarks with the reminder that they had seen two World Wars, and a Great Depression that came out of the first and led to the second, so their motivations were simply stated – to prevent and if possible to survive a third world war.  The cruelty of nuclear holocaust was visible to all as they gathered to forge a new world order. Continue Reading

In celebration of #ClimateWeek, we’re pleased to announce that Sultan Latif has joined Save the Children as Director of the Humanitarian Climate Crisis Unit (HCCU). The unit was made possible by generous seed funding from our long-term partner, Hau’oli Mau Loa Foundation. Thanks to their support, we are adapting to the new realities of humanitarian work by focusing on the impact that #climatechange and extreme weather events have on children’s lives. Continue Reading

September 16, 2020

Bill Gates Sr. holding the Global Hero award, presented by Global Washington on December 10, 2015.

My deepest condolences go out to the Gates family this week and in the days to come. Bill Gates Sr. was instrumental in the founding of Global Washington nearly 14 years ago. In fact, our founding Board Chair, Bill Clapp, met with him around a dinner table, together with Akhtar Badshah, who was then leading Microsoft Philanthropies, to muse about the growing significance of global development expertise in the Seattle area. Centering and promoting global health and development became the mission of Global Washington thanks to the support of visionaries such as Bill Gates Sr. Ours is just a small part of the enormous legacy he leaves behind in our community and around the world.